You Will Have 45 Minutes to Plan and Write an Essay on the Topic Below

You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well- organized and carefully written as you can make it.

Americans now spend $91 billion a year on veterinary care for their pets, up from $11 billion just seven years ago. Add to that cost of pet food and other supplies, and the number rises to $47 billion, nearly three times as much as the federal government spends on welfare grants. Poodles get root canals, cats undergo chemotherapy, rabbits are treated with radiation, and prairie dogs get oxygen therapy in intensive-care units. People spend enormous amounts to pay for special diets for their pets while cities create parks for off- leash puppy play dates. For a price, we can take our dogs for day care or psychotherapy and buy them $200 cashmere sweaters and leopard-skin beds. Clearly, our love affair with our pets has gotten out of control.

Burkhard Bilger’s “The Last Meow” published in The New Yorker Sept. 8, 2003.

Explain Bilger’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Computer spyware that allows parents to monitor their teens’ behavior might be scary, but it’s a good idea. Of course, there is a fine line between being responsively protective and irresponsibly nosy. You shouldn’t monitor to find out if your daughter’s friend has a crush on Kevin next door or that Mrs. Peterson gives too muh homework or what schoolmate snubbed your son. You are there to start conversations and to be a safety net. To borrow from the national intelligence lexicon-and yes, that’s uncomfortable – you’re listening to dangerous chatter. Anything less would be neglect.

Adapted from “The Undercover Parent” –HarlenCoben

Explain Coben’s argument, and discuss the ways in which you agree or disagree with his analysis and conclusion. Support your position by providing reasons and examples from your own observations, experiences, or readings. You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well- organized and carefully written as you can make it.

I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of mankind. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Autobiography.

Explain John Stuart Mill’s argument, and discuss the ways in which you agree or disagree with his views. Support your position by providing reasons and examples from your own observations, experiences, or readings.

Logan Feys argues, “To be human is to be an individual human, with individual tastes, talents, values, and aspirations that are distinct from those of others. Living in society, we are under constant pressure to surrender our individuality to the will of the majority, the school, the workplace, the family, etc.” (par. 6)

Do you agree with Feys? Write a well-developed essay discussing the degree to which you agree or disagree with Feys’ argument about individuality and society. Use examples from the text and your personal experience to support your opinion.